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Thursday, July 14, 2016

Last week I took some vacation days and off we went to a cabin on a lake. I made a reasonable effort at staying unplugged, but logging into Facebook on that Thursday brought news of the Philando Castile shooting the night before in the Twin Cities, where I live. Instant inner turbulence. The weather had already been turbulent. Earlier in the week, we had spent about 30 minutes in the basement riding out the peak of a severe storm. As my photograph shows, more turbulent weather was on the way, but how beautiful this moment.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. O Thou. Thou who didst call us this morning out of sleep and death. I come, we all of us come, down through the litter and the letters of the day. On broken legs. Sweet Christ, forgive and mend. Of thy finally unspeakable grace, grant to each in his own dark room valor and an unnatural virtue. Amen."

Friday, April 01, 2016

Earlier this week New York Times columnist David Brooks was on Charlie Rose for the show's full hour. It was excellent. He talked about what's on everyone's mind these days - the election - but he talked about so much more. He talked about things that resonate with posts on this blog and my other writing (think: Finding Livelihood), including the need for contemplative leisure as per Josef Pieper and Sabbath ("a palace in time") as per Abraham Heschel, the importance of love in the workplace, and his style of writing by arranging piles of material on the floor. He also talked about the need to make commitments and then to structure your life to create the discipline to keep those commitments, the importance of parental love (interestingly, the special importance of mother love for sons), the gift of aging and better learning to be yourself, and so much more. My husband and I watched it together and talked about it long afterward; then a friend and I had a lengthy text conversation about it. I keep going over in my mind the things he said. So much to think about!

The entire episode is now posted on CharlieRose.com. Now that it's posted, I'm going to watch it again and urge you do watch it also. Skip reading some posts on this blog, even the links in the preceding paragraph, and instead jump over to this interview. I think most of you will feel encouraged and uplifted, like you've been given a substantial dose of calm good sense, even hope.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Ten years ago at this time we were bringing our youngest son to college out east, emptying the nest, just as Hurricane Katrina was coming ashore down south. In honor of the 10th anniversary of Katrina, here's a blog post I wrote then from a motel in Ohio on the drive home from that trip.

~~~

A Tale of Two Realities (posted September 4, 2005)

Writing from Ohio, on our way back home from the east coast. Said a tearful goodbye to my son (my tears, not his) and we all now begin a new journey.

The week has been almost surreal in its contrasts. Every day we were on a beautiful campus, sparkling clean and prepared for the arrival of new students and their parents. Every evening we went back to our hotel room and turned on the television and watched the devastation of Louisiana and Mississippi.

During the day we were part of a well-planned community that was opening its arms to a new student class and the families of the new class. “Community” was a word we heard frequently in the orientation sessions and it appeared they tried to live it out, even in the hospitable movement of the one thousand people gathered for these sessions from one venue to the next (“we want to move in community,” said the hosts). During our hotel time we watched people moving – or not moving – in chaos.

The sessions at the college focused heavily on the behavior standards set for their students and the goal they had for each of them to strive for excellence and live in service to others during their time at the school and in their lives thereafter. The coverage on the television dwelt on the failures of responsible parties, the consequences of poor planning, the lawless behavior of some.

In the dorms, parents were busy carrying in bags from Target, K-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and IKEA, filled with the necessities their sons and daughters would need living away from home. Some lucky students were carrying in televisions and DVD players, luxuries for their home away from home. Video coverage on CNN in the evening showed a woman covering her face as she ran out of a store with her stolen feminine hygiene products and a man without covered face running from a store with a brand new television.

In the dining hall we were fed wonderful meals, with all the water we needed – even coffee, tea, lemonade, iced tea. In the evening we were reminded that people south of us had no food or water.

On the last day of orientation, the auditorium was filled with students who would make up the class of 2009. The room was electric with joy, promise, potential, and hope. Scenes from New Orleans that evening spoke only of despair.

I cried when I said goodbye to my son but they were the tears of a good parting, a blessing on him as he begins to construct this next adult phase of his life. The tears of Katrina were tears of total loss, final goodbyes.

My husband and I have been quieter on the drive back home than we thought we’d be. Our world, and the world, is different than it was even one week ago. Lots to think about.

~~~

[Photo: On that college campus, the eagle flying against a gray wet sky.]

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

A couple years ago, I wrote a guest post for Good Letters blog in the months following the Newtown school shooting and the Boston bombs. You can read that post here: "Deliver Us From Evil." If you haven't read it, this post may not make much sense, so if you have the time, I encourage you to click over and then come back.

That post at Good Letters has now been on my mind in the days following the Charleston shooting, because last week I realized I'd gotten out of the habit of that specific prayer: a prayer for deliverance from evil on behalf of this country, this world. In that post I stated that I was setting my alarm for a certain time each morning and would pause at the ring to say a prayer of corporate protection, adding my small prayer to all the prayers.

I’ve set the alarm on my phone to go off thirty minutes after I usually get up. It’s set to repeat daily. When it goes off with its blues guitar sound, I am praying for the safety of this country, our schools, skies, and public places, for the safety of the world, for protection of the innocents.

I had kept the practice going for a long time, but more and more often I turned off the alarm because of a work conference call, or travel, or any number of legitimate – or not so legitimate – excuses, until one day after turning it off, I forgot to turn it back on.

Monday, May 25, 2015

I’m reflecting on all that I don’t know and will never know about the extent to which men and women have sacrificed for this country’s freedoms.

Here’s an example. In late April of this year, my husband and I watched several television programs that aired commemorating the 40-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam war in April 1975. One program in particular stunned me. Rory Kennedy's film, "Last Days in Vietnam," seen on PBS American Experience, was about the evacuation of the the U.S. embassy, which was actually the evacuation of Saigon from the place of the U.S. embassy. I had no idea the extent of heroism, sacrifice, and drama related to this evacuation.

April 29-30, 1975: I was just about to graduate from high school. I remember watching the news about Saigon on television – we’d been watching the news about the Vietnam war for years – but I don’t remember taking in the details or the scope of the event. Certainly, much of what was in the documentary has come to light over the years and wasn’t on the nightly news. But also, certainly, and sadly, I probably was more focused on what I’d wear to graduation and making final college decisions at the time.

Here are only a few examples of what I learned from the documentary. The Marines made 75 helicopter runs, within 24 hours, in and out of the embassy to bring South Vietnamese (men, women, children) and Americans out to waiting ships. The helicopters were crammed full of people; the ships were crammed full of people. Marines on the ground were going around Saigon trying to find food and clothes for the refugees on the ships. No one wanted to stop evacuating people from the embassy grounds until the last person waiting for his or her turn on the helicopter had a spot and was airborne, but eventually a line had to be drawn after which no more people could be lifted it. It must have been a devastating moment in real life; it was a devastating moment in the documentary. The documentary was full of statements from the servicemen flying the helicopters, on the ships, and in the embassy. You can hear the heartbreak in their voices that people were left behind, but all they did to get as many out as they did had me choked up.

There was a story about how a couple Americans - not sure if they were embassy personnel or Marines - went around Saigon personally picking up the tailor who had helped them sew uniforms, and his family, the cooks who had fed them, and their families, and so on; they picked up all kinds of workers for whom they were grateful, and their families.

One South Vietnamese pilot took a Chinook helicopter and landed it near his home in Saigon to rescue his family. It was too big to land on the ship, however, and so they each jumped out of the helicopter from high up. The Marines on the deck caught – caught! – each one, including the baby wrapped in a blanket. The father hovered the Chinook over the water while he got out of his flight suit and stepped out just as it rolled into the water; he lived and boarded the ship with only his underwear, and his saved family.

There was a story about a boatload of South Vietnamese and a few Marines traversing a small river through enemy territory to get to the waiting ships. Just as they entered the area where they thought they would get shot at, a huge storm came out of nowhere and shielded them in sight and sound by the rain. When the storm passed they were out of enemy territory.

There was a scene where the ships loaded with thousands and thousands of people approached the Philippines. The ships with South Vietnamese flags weren’t allowed in. They had to take down their flags, and Americans put up their flags instead. The documentary showed the South Vietnamese lowering their flag and singing their national anthem, saying goodbye to their country, saying goodbye to everything.

Monday, September 29, 2014

A friend at church, a philosophy professor at a nearby university, has gathered a group of women to read together through N. T. Wright's new release, Surprised By Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues. It's a book of essays that posits that assumptions about what the Bible does or does not say don't necessarily match the reality of what it actually does or does not say, particularly as related to contemporary issues.

The chapter we talked about last night was about faith and science and the widespread tendency to be unable to hold both in our brains at the same time. Blame it on Epicurus, the third-century BC Greek philosopher who spread the word that the gods, if they even existed, were so far removed from any earthly care or concern that we were essentially on our own. Blame it on the separation of church and state, which has shaped our way of thinking, here in the U.S. more so than in Europe, to such an extent that it seems impossible to imagine we’re part of a reality that includes it all, heaven and earth, in a dynamic, interactive, and mysterious present. Blame it on lots of things, but let’s do something about it.

The women in the room all read the chapter with an eye toward how it informs their lives and their work. Teachers thought about the classroom; parents thought about the raising of their children; those with a political spirit thought about voting decisions and acts of citizenry. I thought about my writing and how Wright’s words encourage me to keep writing in the vein of looking for signs of God's presence in the quotidian, of imagining layers of reality, of exploring the interplay of divine and human.

“Judaism and Christianity classically…celebrate and explore the mysterious interpenetration of heaven and earth," writes Wright. Each of us left with minds and hearts excited to further celebrate and explore that mystery.

Aiming at the intersections of thought, faith, imagination, and beauty in everyday life.

Established 2004

"Thou takest the pen – and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute – and the notes shimmer. Thou takes the brush – and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond where Thou art. How, then, can I hold anything back from Thee."
–Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

By day I'm a medical writer. After hours I do another kind of work. Creative writing, spiritual writing, essaying. This blog arises from those after hours. I write about work/vocation, meaning, hope, imagination, faith, science, creativity/writing, books, and anything else I feel the impulse to write about. I hope these short posts provide camaraderie for your own creative and spiritual life.